This invention relates to a method of automatically machining 3-dimensional solid parts from an abstract definition of the part.
Current technology for machining complex metal parts is usually to make drawings of the outlines and dimensions of the desired part. These are given to a model maker who makes various section plates and then fills the desired part between sections with plaster. A steel model of the part is then obtained by copy milling from the model maker's part to the steel part.
A second technological approach to machining complex parts is to use current programming systems. These permit users to individually direct a tool across facets of the part but do not provide a technique for total description and automatic gouge free machining of a solid part. The model maker's skill is still employed because of the complexity of programming tool motion through a region with multiple interfacing geometric shapes.
Female parts are derived by forming a male part in carbon and then using electrical discharge machining to erode the reverse shape out of metal.
Constructive solid geometry (CSG) is a method of representing objects by adding and subtracting a basic set of solid shapes called primitives. Primitives might be cubes, cylinders, cones, spheres, ellipsoids, etc. Two or more primitives can be combined to form a new solid object by an ordered series of Boolean additions and subtractions among the primitive shapes. The systematic application of the Boolean set operations is usually controlled by a binary tree data structure commonly referred to as CSG tree. Information on CSG and solid modeling and a history of the field and its status is given papers by A. A. G. Requicha and H. B. Voelcker in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, March 1982 and October 1983.